The Spectator magazine combines incisive political analysis with books and arts reviews of unrivaled authority. Absolutely free. Go to spectator.com.uk forward slash voucher.

Hello and welcome to Marshall Matters with me, Winston Marshall at Spectator.

Today I'm joined by feminist theorist, column at unheard author of the book the case against the

sexual revolution a new guide to sex in the 21st century and host of the maiden mother matriarch

podcast Louise Perry hello thank you so much for joining me today.

You're very welcome. Thank you having me.

So I want to jump in, if I can, before getting into your book and other such things,

with what I think is a motherhood crisis.

And perhaps it's something that I'm over-worryed about,

but the Office of National Statistics suggests that I might not be entirely wrong to be worried about it.

But they've reported this year that now half of women are childless at 30,

which is for the first time ever, this is in Britain, that 18% of

women aged 45 were childless by 2020, which by the way suggests that a woman aged 30 who is

childless will statistically probably be childless forever or child free which is another way of phrasing it

and that mothers have on average 1.92 children now which is lower than the 2.08 that their mother's

generation had now I think you answer some of the some of these issues for why this is the case in your book, which I'd like to get into.

But I was speaking to this morning to someone, and I sort of assumed that this was a bad thing.

And his reaction was like, well, that's good.

We need fewer people.

And we need to have managed decline.

And so it might be a very simple question is, why is that bad?

Do we need mothers?

...